120G Rimless shallow peninsula tank

[Greybeard]

GHL doser? I just ordered a CoralBox doser. How do you like it?

Is that a tiger cowrie? Cool looking critters. I found out the hard way, they're predators. I had a 3" tiger cowrie dispose of a 6" round purple sponge in something under a day. Sponge just disappeared, got to poking around, and found the cowrie up under the ledge where the sponge was, cleaning up the bits and pieces left over. No more cowries for me.

 

[Janci]

GHL doser? I just ordered a CoralBox doser. How do you like it?

Is that a tiger cowrie? Cool looking critters. I found out the hard way, they're predators. I had a 3" tiger cowrie dispose of a 6" round purple sponge in something under a day. Sponge just disappeared, got to poking around, and found the cowrie up under the ledge where the sponge was, cleaning up the bits and pieces left over. No more cowries for me.

I like the GHL doser. Nice design, easy to calibrate a d program and Wi-Fi makes I can do all from the couch.

It is indeed a tiger cowrie. One of the 3 in the tank. Have them since years and were always part of the clean-up crew. No issues so far.

 

[Greybeard]

I like the GHL doser. Nice design, easy to calibrate a d program and Wi-Fi makes I can do all from the couch.

I wanted a 4 head doser for my new system, looked at the GHL, and the Kamoer X4, ended up cheaping out and buying a CoralBox doser for about half the price. I may regret it, don't know yet, but it's wifi attached, and setup is done by remote app. We'll just have to see how it works out. Design looks very similar to the GHL.

 

[Janci]

So the tank has been running smoothly and I have been taking the time to add fish and corals.
For fish there were some losses. As I do not have a lid on the tank, some fish escaped during night and were found at morning time: the mystery wrasse and a diamond watchman goby which I added to maintain the gravel bed.
The mystery wrasse was kind of a bully and I guess he got a little to enthusiastic at night or got a bully on his butt.
The diamond watchman made home in one of the sleeping holes of another wrasse and might have been scared by that one.

This is the fish list by now:
2 baby blue tangs (Paracanthurus hepatus)
1 yellow fin bristletooth tomini tang (Ctenochaetus tominiensis)
1 black sailfin blenny (Atrosalarias fuscus)
1 female red velvet fairy wrasse (Cirrhilabrus rubrisquamis)
1 female red marging fairy wrasse (Cirrhilabrus rubrimarginatus)
2 male Msccoskeri wrasse (Paracheilinus mccoskeri) - they are small and will see if they behave. Might rehouse one of them later.
1 longfin fairy wrasse (Cirrhilabrus Rubriventralis)
1 filamented flasher wrasse (Paracheilinus filamentosus)
1 ruby longfin wrasse (Cirrhilabrus Rubeus)
1 cirrhilabrus pylei
1 skunk clown fish
2 picasso clownfish
1 royal gramma (Gramma Loreto)

With the mobile it is hard to take any decent picture of them. This is the best I could to by now:

Here is the C. Pylei acclimating. A easier target for the camera.

 

[Janci]

As for corals, all is doing well, including parameters.
Even with the extra fish load, my nitrates and phosphates are at zero.
The Nyos kimmer is pulling liquid skimmate. It seems that the small support I made is just about the right height.
I am dosing ALK and Ca only.
ALK is stable at 7.3 dkh
Ca is at 460 ppm
PH is 8.15
Mg is around 1320ppm
Salinity 1.025
Neverhteless, I took one sample and send it to Triton for the first ICP analysis. I have read many times tha the home test kits give very different results than the ICP tests.
I will be using the ICP sampling every 1-2 months to monitor the water parameters as a back up for the test kits.
I hope to have the results later this week and to make a comparison.

The Apogee MQ-200 PAR meter arrived. It seemed my lights were producing too low PAR. I measured 150 in the middle of the tank and less than 100 at the bottom.
This was due to:
- not all 8 T5 bulbs were in use or at 100%
- the Giesemann T5 fixture was placed too high
So adjustments were done:
- LED's were done acclimating and put to 100%
- lowered the light fixture till 6inch from the water level
- all blue T5 are not at 100%, white still at 50% but will adjust this till 80% over time.
PAR is now close to 160 at the bottom, 300 at the middle and over 400 at the top.
I will observe the polyps and colours of the corals during the next few days and see if there is any improvement.

As for pictures of the corals, I only have the phone pictures for now.
Soon I will take 3 weeks holiday and travel to Belgium. As it was my brithday this month, a new camera and macro lens is in the making for some more pro level pictures later.

Night shot:

Purple with blue polyps. Still adjusting to the tank and slowly raised from the sand bed to higher PAR level areas.

Details... as good as it gets.

 

[Danny Venditti]

Little off topic... but I finalised the "catio" which I promised my wife.
We moved from an apartment to a house with garden and the deal was to have a place for tha cats at the outside.
Dubai is not the most cat/pet friendly place so they are not allowed to run freely in the garden.
With this project finished, I will have more time for the tank.

I have just one question. Did you lock her in there so you could go to the Coral store????

 

[Janci]

I have just one question. Did you lock her in there so you could go to the Coral store????

I took a shot at it. But she is a wild cat.
Best left in nature...

 

[Mattres]

Tanks looking great!
And your corals are looking happy.
You've done pretty well taking pictures with a phone, I can never manage anything respectable with mine.
And happy belated birthday, hope you find a nice camera and macro lense!

 

[ethridge78]

Very nice setup.

 

[Janci]

As you can notice on the last picture, on the sand bed below the return and wavemakers, some cyano was starting to form.
As I have intensified my lighting in the last days (after PAR measuremnts), the growth has accelarated and this morning I saw it started to spread to the other side of the tank.
The cyano appears in the areas where the flow is the lowest.
I had cyano issues in the previous tank as well and there I believed this was due to a deep sand bed in combination of improper vodka dosing.
For this tank I chose a shallow sand bed with much more coarse sand and biopellet reactor, but it seems that cyano is invincible...
There must be some kind of imbalance.
I just got a notification the my Triton ICP sample has arrived in Germany and I hope to have the results soon.

Somewhere this week I will need to find the time to clean the sand bed before I go on holiday for 3 weeks.
When back at home tonight I will lower the daylight T5's to slow down the growth. It will not make it disappear but I hope it will be controlled during my absence.
The LED Lightbars can be controlled from anywhere via the My_GHL website:

When entering the My GHL website, the dashboard with sensor values is the first thing you see.

You can check the GHL Lightbar settings for each channel

And when selecting a channel, you can edit the timing and intensity very easily.
Red was previously at almost 55% intensity during the day and is now lowered till 10%.
The 2 peaks you see in the settings are for the sun up/down program.

 

[Janci]

Sand bed pictures

 

[Janci]

Tanks looking great!
And your corals are looking happy.
You've done pretty well taking pictures with a phone, I can never manage anything respectable with mine.
And happy belated birthday, hope you find a nice camera and macro lense!

Thank you Matt.
I am looking at the Nikon D7200 with a Tokina 100mm macro lense.
That will do, at least if I can manage the settings correctly.

 

[prsnlty]

Since last update there were not too many changes.
Tank is maturing and is one month old. This week I will do a water change.
Parameters have been held stable during this time.
I have been adding some clean up crew (dwarf blue legged hermit crabs) and I found one rock to produce some algae which I am not sure how to battle.
It is not long hair algae as it blows off the rock as soon as you wave with your hand over it and create some waves, but after 2 days it comes back.
The clean up crew (snails, crabs) do not eat it.
A video below.
It is a nuisance as when it detaches from the rock it floats in the tank till it gets stuck somewhere and it annoys the corals.

Any suggestions are welcome.
The rock was bought new and sat with the other live rock for close to 2 months. Only now in tank it started to "bloom".

Do a h202 dip if you can with that rock. You don't want that spreading throughout the tank.

 

[Janci]

Do a h202 dip if you can with that rock. You don't want that spreading throughout the tank.

It was strange to see at first but I ket the rock in the tank and waited for 1 week.
All algae/diatoms disappeared and the first corals were glued in place.
I doubted a lot to take the rock out but luckily there was improvement noticed quickly.
Further no PO4 changes noticed so far.
[emoji106]

 

[prsnlty]

It was strange to see at first but I ket the rock in the tank and waited for 1 week.
All algae/diatoms disappeared and the first corals were glued in place.
I doubted a lot to take the rock out but luckily there was improvement noticed quickly.
Further no PO4 changes noticed so far.
[emoji106]

That's good!

The tank is looking great Janci, Love the led addition and your SPS look very healthy [emoji1] Happy belated birthday by the way!

 

[Mattres]

Thank you Matt.
I am looking at the Nikon D7200 with a Tokina 100mm macro lense.
That will do, at least if I can manage the settings correctly.

That camera and lens will do the job nicely mate!
Camera settings can seem daunting at first but get easier the more you use the camera. look forward to seeing some photos!

Hopefully the cyano disappears soon, I've never had it but from what I've read it usually is some kind of imbalance. Be interesting to see the triton results.

 

[Janci]

Today we received the Triton Lab results which do not seem to be that bad at all.
There is an amount of Cu detected. I am not sure what the source is.
This week I have done a small water change to remove some cyano and will have to continue to lower the Cu amount.
I will do a Cu test tonight to see if the kit also detects something.
Carbon will also be replaced before I leave on holiday.
Not too much time left to make huge changes and as the corals seem to survive and grow, it is definitely not affecting the tank.
I will send a new test after a big water change and running of carbon for a couple of weeks.

Mg is low, compared with test kit which showed around on the day of taking the sample 1360 mg/l.
Will add some magnesium in the top off water to gradually get this to the desired level.

 

[Greybeard]

Excellent

I'm planning to go to the full 'Triton Method' on my new system. Having a fairly extensive, hopefully accurate, set of test results gives me warm fuzzies like you wouldn't believe

Possibly some Cuprisorb??

How long did it take to get your results?

 

[Janci]

Excellent
I'm planning to go to the full 'Triton Method' on my new system. Having a fairly extensive, hopefully accurate, set of test results gives me warm fuzzies like you wouldn't believe
Possibly some Cuprisorb??
How long did it take to get your results?

Between arrival of the samples in the lab and receipt of the results, 2 days.
Cuprisorb will help, but I am wondering where this comes from.

 

[Greybeard]

Between arrival of the samples in the lab and receipt of the results, 2 days.
Cuprisorb will help, but I am wondering where this comes from.

All sorts of things can cause a one time taint. I would try and get rid of it. If it doesn't come back, problem solved. If it does come back, well, _then_ where it is coming from becomes important.

2 days. Not bad. They're opening a US testing facility in CA. Not sure when it's supposed to go online, but I expect that to make a big difference in response time.